Diary – 30 September 2005

It was that faintly implausible radical and revolutionary, Clem Attlee, who once likened the Labour party annual conference to ‘a Parliament of the movement’. And so, indeed, it used to be before our current Great Helmsman and his chums on the central committee put an end to all that. The party may still make its autumnal trip to the seaside but all it does when it gets there is to lay on a pageant or present a TV carnival. Worse than that, it is now essentially a commercial undertaking, with even journalists — below the rank of editor or political editor — required to pay for the privilege of being allowed into the hall to listen to the leader’s speech. When I went to my first Labour party conference 50 years ago, there were no extensive arcades in which big business set out its wares, no fat cats jostling to get into the posher receptions and few, if any, ‘distinguished visitors’ (whom we probably would not have recognised even if they had turned up).